


Tattoos Are Like Memories, They Might Fade

by EverythingCanadian



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: AU tattoos, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 15:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverythingCanadian/pseuds/EverythingCanadian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronald Speirs was well into his fifties and had tattoos. He had tattoos from places he had been, things he had done and important memories. A few he didn't know when, where or what they were from or how he ended up with them. In fact, he’s had to figure out what each tattoo was to him, and why they were where they were on his body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tattoos Are Like Memories, They Might Fade

**Author's Note:**

> this is form this prompt here: http://everythingcanadian.tumblr.com/post/52340166650/what-if-tattoos-just-randomly-appeared-on-our-skin
> 
> I DO NOT OWN THEM SORRY.

Ronald Speirs was well into his fifties and had tattoos.

He had tattoos from places he had been, things he had done and important memories. A few he didn't know when, where or what they were from or how he ended up with them. In fact, he’s had to figure out what each tattoo was to him, and why they were where they were on his body.

he had written them down in a book in order of importance for himself, just incase something happened to him or he was losing his mind he could look back in his journal and at least hope he could remember.

He had already figured out the bayonet on his left shoulder was from the second world war, it had rusted and caked with blood and looked like it was flaking away. As if the lives of the men he had killed were slowly making it deteriorate along with their memories.

A loopy scrawl of _Dog_ crossed out with a just as fancy _Easy_ written under it in grey ink. That one was on the pinky side of his left palm, in the thick meaty part.

Large black letters etched in his handwriting were writhing on his right thigh, constantly moving as if it had a heart beat of it’s own. A name of the man who had a large discolored scar in the same place.  

Ron didn’t want to think of that one much, always fearing he’d see it and it wouldn’t be pumping faintly when the man was away either at work or part time schooling at Boston college. Yet it beat with power when the man was home and safe with Ron.

There’s a bright red and green poppy curled on his right calf, the stem seeming to mold to the muscles in his leg. He’s pegged it as the men he had served with. Every time he feels it heat up on his skin he knows there’s either a new furled leaf waiting to fold open or a new deep green section on the ever growing vine.

He knows another of his war friends has had their time pass. He knows it won't stop until either the last has fallen or he has surcum to the same path.

The small, bound scroll below his right shoulder blade was his own grade school education; along with the broken fountain pen that was supposed to be his education at MIT, yet he never finished and never had desire to go back.

He has a beautifully drawn pair of tags on his left shoulder blade. One of the tags is his own with all the information he has on the set he wears around his neck still. The other tag is blank as if it’s waiting for his final days where it will be etched with his own information again, maybe the chain attaching it with break. He doesn’t know quite yet but he’s working on it.

These are the ones he knows, the ones he’s seen appear on his body, the way it looks as if the ink seeps into his flesh with a small pang of heat accompanying it.

The ones he doesn’t know are two simple lines going around his ring finger. H has a suspicion as to what that one is.

And the one on his lower abdomen. It looks faint now, but during the war when he had a bathtub in his room he looked at it, a small phrase in German. Ron asked Webster about it but the blue eyed kid scoffed with amusement and walked off in the opposite direction.

Maybe it was something he had heard the opposition say in the war or it could have just been nonsense. Or it was that fleeting feeling that Ron couldn’t place, something he had wanted to remember but maybe he forgot in the recesses of his own broken mind.

He had contacted Liebgott a few years ago to ask what it meant but the man just choked on the other end of the line and hung up. Ron knew it was something beautiful. Liebgott didn’t speak German anymore, not after what had happened to Webster, and Ron wouldn’t have bothered Liebgott if he didn’t feel that it was something akin to a feeling that they or every pair or group in the company had.

He will one day figure it out. He will know he heard Liebgott say it to Webster in times of pain and of need. He will know it applies to many of the men in Easy, how they all had to go through pain and loss to find what they needed from each other. One day he will know that it means _Who wants to lick honey must not shy away from the bees._

The tattoos on his skin were living, like flesh themselves, constantly repairing and breaking and sometimes fading or outlined in bold ink with his thoughts of them. Even with the faintest one of them all, he never lost them, he would only gain more.


End file.
